


Feeling is Believing

by apirateapoetapawn



Category: Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Character Study, Other, Polyamory, Psychological Trauma, Redemption, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9296273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apirateapoetapawn/pseuds/apirateapoetapawn





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notearchiver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notearchiver/gifts).



Erik didn’t remember a time before the darkness. 

There was the darkness of his cage in the carnival when all lights had been extinguished and the tent flap was down and he clung to the moldy straw with both fists to keep from screaming his anguish. There was the suffocating darkness of the sack he was forced to wear to tease the crowd before the reveal of his deformity. And there was the darkness that festered in his soul, darkness fed by regular canings and cruel taunts, by hopelessness and impotent anger. 

The first glimmer of hope had been the music, a young woman singing clear, pure notes in an exquisite soprano. She was only passing by on the street outside and her voice faded quickly as she continued on, but he had heard it. 

He forgot in that instant the few stragglers who had come late, staring in shock at him and whispering to each other behind their hands as they exited. Nothing in his waking world was real to him after that. When the laughter and mocking came, when the cane struck his bare shoulders and the rough burlap scratched at his scars he was not there, he was transported to a world of beauty by the sweet memory of her lilting melody. His thoughts were filled with that voice until he wasn’t certain whether he had truly heard it or if his mind had created it. He began to compose music in his head to match that angelic voice with little hope of ever hearing her again. 

Then one lonely evening as the lights of the show were extinguished and the darkness came, a song floated in from the street beyond. He escaped that night and followed her to the opera house where, at last, he was able to live as part of that beautiful dream.

He crept from his hidden lair often, crouching in the shadows of the catwalks above the stage, listening, transcending. From his perch in the rafters he learned musical arranging, staging, dance, becoming audience, student, and critic. He became adept at recognizing the unnamable elusive something that elevated a good performance to a stellar one, saw into the soul of the singer. Yet the darkness in his own soul writhed and gnawed, turned to hate and jealousy, and he was unaware of its power - until he heard Christine.

Erik had expected kindness from her, gratitude, but in the deepest places of his heart where even he did not dare glance he longed for her love. Hoped she could see the beauty within him he was certain was there, undiscovered by any other. What he had not expected was pity, and in the end it was her pity that broke him. It was not pity for his scars, for his outward ugliness, but for the distortion within. He wept at her rejection of this part of him, the only part that had ever been nurtured, ever been allowed its full potential. 

He told them to go, to leave him, expecting to be abandoned by the young lovers, to be shunned and forgotten. Was it not his only due? But Christine and, shockingly, Raoul came to him and comforted him with sweet whispers and tender caresses, the light of their forgiveness dispelling the shadows in his heart forever.

With the mob closing in, they begged Erik to leave the opera house and come with them so he led them through a passage only he knew to the street above. The three left Paris that night and traveled to Italy where they began a new life together, happy in each other’s company, happy in each other’s arms. 

Erik looked out the window onto the piazza where revelers wandered the streets in their colorful garb, paper faces on parade for Carnevale, a rueful smile on his lips. He could have turned himself in, been arrested and hanged, been done with the life that had been done with him from the start, but Raoul had pointed out it would be hanging an innocent man for he was no longer the Phantom, no longer that bleak, tortured soul.

His latest composition was to debut at La Scala in the spring, the story of an embittered man liberated by the redemptive power of love. Raoul was producing the opera and Christine was to star.

No, Erik didn’t remember a time before the darkness, but he remembered the moment he turned his face away from it to welcome the light.


End file.
